Pelosi: GOP just doesn't like Obama

11:17 AM, September 20, 2013

By David Jackson

USA TODAY

Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House, seems to believe that Republicans don’t like President Barack Obama because they’re jealous.

“You know why it is,” Pelosi told Politico in an interview. “He's brilliant. ... He thinks in a strategic way in how to get something done ... and he’s completely eloquent. That’s a package that they don't like.”

Republicans also don’t like what Pelosi called the president’s nonpartisanship.

Obama has been “open, practically apolitical, certainly nonpartisan, in terms of welcoming every idea and solution,” Pelosi told Politico. “I think that’s one of the reasons the Republicans want to take him down politically, because they know he is a nonpartisan president, and that's something very hard for them to cope with.”

Pelosi also defended Obama against criticism from fellow Democrats, many of whom say they don't get enough attention from the president.

“I've served since President Reagan,” Pelosi said. “I don't know any member of Congress who ever said, ‘I'm satisfied with the communication that we have from the White House.’ That's just the way it is. ... I'm very proud of the president.”

Republicans scoffed at Pelosi’s claims on nonpartisanship by the president; some noted that Obama gave a speech criticizing GOP budget policies within hours of Monday’s mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard.

“President Obama is so apolitical that he’d rather negotiate with Vladimir Putin than Republican leaders in the House,” said Matt Gorman, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “He's so nonpartisan that he sees nothing wrong with attacking the opposing party in a speech during the middle of a national tragedy.”